Parents, Kids Beam As Lantana Pledges New Ballfield Lights

LANTANA — The city`s approximately 450 Little Leaguers can get ready to pick up their bats, Mayor Bob McDonald said Tuesday. It looks like the coming baseball season is on.

``I think so,`` he said after a Town Council meeting, ``unless we have some other kinds of problem. (Field repairs are being planned) in the nick of time.``

George Turenne, president of American Lighting Maintenance, on Tuesday offered to place 10 concrete poles and energy-saving lights in the fields at Branch and Broadway in time for opening day in March. Turenne still needs to bid on the contract, which will be advertised Jan. 8. The Town Council on Jan. 13 will choose the contractor that comes closest to its $53,000 budget and March deadline.

``We`re making progress,`` said Connie Cummings, president of the women`s auxiliary of the Lantana Athletic Association, who has spent the last month calling contractors and trying to find low-cost repairs.

``I think we`ll have our season and have a good season.``

Kids like 14-year-old Jimmy Pickard have been looking for other baseball teams since October, when the plans for the coming season first became in doubt.

Light poles at the fields behind the National Enquirer needed to be replaced after some snapped during a storm last year.

The need sparked a scramble by parents and city officials, who have scraped together $25,000 from the county, $28,000 from the town and money from concession stand sales at the National Enquirer Christmas tree to buy new poles. Cost estimates range between $53,000 and more than $100,000.

``It`s something that should have been done a long time ago,`` Jim Pickard, father of three children who play for Lantana Athletic Association teams, said of the last-minute repairs. He has been sweating out the verdict while Jimmy and his daughters, Michelle, 8, and Kristi, 9, eagerly await the summer season. ``They even took out all their baseball pictures from last year and laid them out on the floor last night,`` Pickard said.

``If my kids can`t play here in Lantana, I`m going to take them to Lake Worth. That`s what being a kid is about. Baseball is being a kid.``

Sign-ups for the season will go on as scheduled, Cummings said, Jan. 11, 12 and 18 at the Little League field.